Musical Monday - All Night Long (All Night) by Lionel Richie

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: November 12, 1983 through December 3, 1983.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: November 19, 1983 through December 3, 1983.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.

If you asked me to name the most bland, boring, and unexciting "party" song of all time, I would unhesitatingly tell you it is All Night Long. The video tries desperately to make this song exciting, but the bright colored clothes and the forced smiles just highlight how utterly uninteresting this song is. When Richie sings "we're going to party, karamu, fiesta, forever", it sounds like someone's Dad running into a room full of teens, turning on all the lights, throwing on a Perry Cuomo record and saying "this is how we partied when I was young!". This entire song is a "hello, fellow kids" meme set to a soft rock beat.

Previous Musical Monday: Uptown Girl by Billy Joel

Subsequent Musical Monday: Only You by the Flying Pickets

Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton

Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Say Say Say by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Say Say Say by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson

List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989

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Musical Monday - Uptown Girl by Billy Joel

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Never.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Never.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: November 5, 1983 through December 3, 1983.

All songs are snapshots in time. Sometimes those snapshots are relatively short-lived. The song Uptown Girl and its related video were made during the rush Joel was experiencing from his new relationship with Christie Brinkley. You can see and hear the joy and exuberance of that fresh and exciting moment in the performance. There is simply so much hope, exhilaration, and expectation evident here.

And of course, now, in 2021, we know that Joel and Brinkley did go on to get married, have a child, and then get divorced. The oddity of moments like that depicted in Uptown Girl is that we now know the ultimate outcome of the events that will flow from that moment, and it casts them in a different light. I will always remember when I found out that the marriage at the centerpiece of John Denver's Annie's Song fell apart, and how that just seemed so wrong. This seems similarly tragic in a way - none of the people in this video know what is in store for them over the next few years, both the highs and the lows. It is a moment in time caught forever, with all of the emotions of those involved untainted by what was to come.

Previous Musical Monday: Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton

Subsequent Musical Monday: All Night Long (All Night) by Lionel Richie

Previous #1 on the U.K. Chart: Karma Chameleon by Culture Club

Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Only You by the Flying Pickets

List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989

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Musical Monday - Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: October 29, 1983 through November 5, 1983.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: November 5, 1983 through November 12, 1983.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.

By 1983, the Bee Gees were essentially persona non grata on the pop charts. Having firmly associated themselves with the disco era, once disco had become an anathema to many people, the Bee Gees went from being the top musical act in the world to an act that couldn't give away tickets. The odd thing is that Bee Gees style music was as popular as ever, as witnessed by the chart-topping success of this song, which had been penned by the Bee Gees, but was handed off to Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton to sing.

Islands in the Stream isn't unique on this score. The 1980s featured several hit songs that were written by one or more of the Bee Gees but sung by someone else - a list of artists that included songs by Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, and Dionne Warwick. Basically, anyone but the Bee Gees seems like they could have success in the 1980s with a Bee Gees song. This quirky phenomenon suggests that the backlash against disco and disco-associated artists wasn't so much about the music as it was about the culture. Disco music was "urban" music, and "urban" was, as it often is, a code word for black and gay. People didn't like disco because they didn't like the music - they kept making disco-style music into chart-toppers as long as it wasn't called disco and wasn;t sung by recognizable disco acts - they just didn't like black and gay people influencing the wider culture.

A large part of the reason Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton could make Islands in the Stream into a hit in 1983 was that they were safe, white, country music artists who never made a disco song. Except for this one. Which they didn't call a disco song. This isn't to say that Rogers and Parton did anything wrong here, but they definitely benefitted from factors well beyond their control that served to position this song as a hit.

Previous Musical Monday: The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats

Subsequent Musical Monday: Uptown Girl by Billy Joel

Previous #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler

Subsequent #1 on the Billboard Hot 100: All Night Long (All Night) by Lionel Richie

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: All Night Long (All Night) by Lionel Richie

List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989

Kenny Rogers     Dolly Parton     1980s Project     Musical Monday     Home

Musical Monday - The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats

#1 on the Billboard Hot 100: Never.

#1 on the Cash Box Top 100: The week of October 1, 1983.

#1 on the U.K. Chart: Never.

The Safety Dance is a song that people think is about something really deep and meaningful, but is in fact about something completely different. The persistent rumor surrounding this song is that it is an allegory about nuclear war, or rather the fear of nuclear war and a protest against the same. I have had this confidently asserted to me on multiple occasions by several different people. The writer and singer of the song, however, says it is about dancing. Literally. Or rather it is about doing the 'wrong" kind of dancing as an anti-establishment protest. Or something.

My takeaway here is that people want the music they love to have a significance it often does not have. If the lyrics to a song are even a little bit ambiguous, and you attach it to a weird and nigh-incomprehensible music video with a dwarf and Morris dancers and a mildly confusing coda of images and people will fill in their own interpretations. This song is about what it says it is about. For years, people have tried to make it be about something more, because they want the art in their life to have depth and meaning.

The real question here is does the intent of the creator definitively settle these sorts of issues? Is the song just about getting thrown out of a dance club for pogoing, or does the cultural zeitgeist that it is about more than that carry weight? Does it matter if people want to give a song significance that was not originally intended?

Previous Musical Monday: Karma Chameleon by Culture Club

Subsequent Musical Monday: Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton

Previous #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Puttin' On the Ritz by Taco

Subsequent #1 on the Cash Box Top 100: Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler

List of #1 Singles from the Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles from the Cash Box Top 100 for 1980-1989
List of #1 Singles on the U.K. Chart for 1980-1989

Men Without Hats     1980s Project     Musical Monday     Home